A tale of two energy superpowers

The load-bearing premise is stated early and briefly: global cooperation matters because the transition will consume a lot of capital and make some things, especially industrial things, more expensive, which is what internalizing an externality means. No major country can afford to cede industrial capacity, since that capacity is both economic strength and deterrence. So the risk is not conflict as such. He expects more economic conflict and says some is unavoidable between any two superpowers; the word carrying the weight in his thesis is “excessive.” Outright war is the extreme case, and he treats it as a category beyond the subject rather than as a scenario to analyze: if it comes to that, decarbonization is the least of anyone’s problems.

On the Chinese side, he argues that “clean energy superpower” is the wrong frame, or at least too narrow a one. The underlying capability is general manufacturing excellence, built over the quarter century since trade relations were normalized, and solar and batteries are two outputs of it rather than its defining feature. Raw materials come from Australia, Chile, Indonesia and China, but nearly every step beyond mining is concentrated in China, and the moat he emphasizes is not cheap labor but the depth and concentration of skill, tooling and process engineering across hubs like Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Ningbo. Two qualifications follow immediately, and both cut against the headline. Clean energy is one element of a much wider industrial strategy that is decidedly not aimed at near-term climate mitigation, as shown by Beijing redirecting cheap state-bank credit from property developers to manufacturers after the real estate bust. And most of that manufacturing runs on coal. He says plainly that China deserves the title of coal superpower more than that of clean energy superpower, that making almost anything there is dirtier than making it in America, and that the new coal fleet will have emissions consequences for decades. He also links the renewables push to security rather than to climate: China lacks liquid hydrocarbons and its oil imports run through a small number of naval chokepoints.

America is the mirror image, the world’s leading producer of both oil and natural gas and its largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, which it has used as an instrument of influence, most visibly in supplying Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The administration in office is doubling down on that strength and on tariffs, which the previous administration had already raised on Chinese solar and battery exports. The turn in the argument is that doubling down on hydrocarbons does not make the country less exposed. China’s grip on the minerals needed for panels, batteries and electric vehicle motors gives it the ability to choke producers anywhere else, a power it has already used on graphite and rare earths, which puts new American factories at risk. So the more the US leans into hydrocarbons, the more exposed its transition supply chains become. Looking outward, he judges that the divergence probably leaves China in a stronger long-term position, since Europe and East Asia depend on American gas now but share China’s multi-decade view on decarbonization. He supports that with survey evidence, and then limits it himself: public opinion is an imperfect predictor of policy, especially in less democratic societies, and climate is not the first priority for most publics, who put security and economic vitality ahead of it.

What he fears is a world split into an American sphere built on hydrocarbons and a Chinese sphere built on renewables, which would slow the transition in America and probably everywhere. The response is six parts, aimed at his own country and pitched as plausibly bipartisan: avoid a war; build an independent North American supply chain for solar, batteries and electric vehicles, which he thinks needs a mix of tariffs, incentives and technology that leapfrogs the Chinese supply chain rather than copying it; rebuild American leadership in nuclear; lead on carbon capture and sequestration, where he argues nobody is yet doing it well and American geology is an advantage; push automation in manufacturing and construction; and make permitting easier. He notes that he would rather have had three parts, because three sells to the public, and answers his own closing question against himself: no, he is not convinced the six would avert the worst risks, but they are worth trying.